The performance Sp(r)i(nk)lling is thematically associated with penance and humility in a moment when the capitalist way of thinking permeates almost all aspects of our lives, together with corruption which has never before been so potentiated on a global scale, as it is today. One important constituent of this performative act are ashes, matter created by burning of something, a symbol of the past and transience. We cannot recognize the subject out of the ashes, which was palpable, material, which had a form of its own once – we can only assume what preceded the grey-black matter. Symbolically, ashes are a sign of an ending, lifelessness, to which it alludes with its achromatic “coloring,” and the phraseme “sprinkle ashes on oneself,” directly alludes to the symbolic gesture of penance for a wrongdoing.
Contemplating the current social moment and the corporative Éminence grise, I repeat the question to myself of whether they posses any feeling for others who could instigate a penance for everything they have done – or whether that is just a utopia.
In a religious sense, people often call upon a penance for their sins, but in reality they exhaustively analyze other people’s sins, while readily shutting their eyes on sins of their own. The performance includes a ritualistic cleansing invoking absolution from sin. With the act of ritualistic cleansing I question purity in relation to the congestion caused by malevolence, taking into account all aspects of life. Instead of water, I use ashes in the cleansing ritual, as a symbol of purification from contemporary filth coming from the media, politics, and everyday intentional and unintentional manipulations.
Transience is undeniable, but with this performance, the act of cleansing oneself, i.e. sprinkling myself with ashes, it is my wish to encourage, at least on a level of association, contemplation about the importance of questions of who and what we are, and where we are, i.e. in which direction are we heading.
On the other hand, the Éminences grise may have already irrevocably defined us and meted out an unwashable reality to us, in which we stoically live.